Blake's fingertips rested on the cold metal of the compartment hatch. A flicker, almost imperceptible, passed through the psychic link he shared with Kitt. Then, a sudden receding. Not a break, not silence, but distance. As if she'd plunged into icy water, leaving him standing on the shore, the connection stretching thin and taut across an unforeseen void.

He felt a pressure build behind his eyes, a disconnect unlike anything since their bonding. Before, her presence had always been immediate, a voice beside his own thoughts. Now, it felt like listening to a radio signal fading into static, the carrier wave still there, but the voice lost in the cosmic noise. He was alone in the dead Pilot's cabin, kneeling beside a makeshift tomb, while Kitt navigated depths he couldn't follow. The silence in the room deepened, broken only by the faint hum of failing emergency lights and the blood pounding in his ears.

He waited, adrift.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy as grave dirt. Blake remained kneeling, the cold deck plating biting into his knees through the combat suit. The air held the faint, cloying scent of decay overlaying something sterile, like a morgue trying to disguise itself as a hospital room. Then, a flicker. A single pulse against the wall of his mind, weak but distinct. Another followed, stronger, cutting through the mental static that had separated him from Kitt.

"Blake?" Her voice, though thin, was undeniably hers. The distance remained, but the connection solidified, like finding a handhold in the dark. "I'm back. Mostly."

He didn't reply, just let the relief wash through him, a current thawing the ice that had formed in his gut.

"The sub-core… it's like the other one," Kitt continued, her mental tone gaining structure, losing the frayed edges left by the Outsider's assault. "Fractured. Echoes of pain. But… receptive. It wants to connect. Use me—use us—as a bridge. A way to link the surviving fragments."

Blake processed this, feeling a grim purpose settle over him. Helping the ship fight back. Avenge the dead Pilot, the family lying peacefully meters away.

"If we can create a network," Kitt explained, "a stable link between these isolated pockets of consciousness… the Leviathan might be able to coordinate. Resist the corruption. Maybe even push the Outsider back."

"Where next?" Blake asked, the words forming silently in his thoughts.

"Engineering." Her response was immediate, sharp. The hesitation and fear that had lingered after the psychic attack were gone, replaced by focused intent. "It's the heart of the ship's power systems, its structural core. If I can interface there, I can stabilize the network, anchor it. Give the Leviathan a fighting chance."

"That makes sense," Blake thought. Power, structure, control. "Alright. Lead the way."

"Drawing a route now," Kitt confirmed. "Using what's left of the ship's own senses, filtered through the sub-cores we've touched. It won't be straight."

Blake pushed himself to his feet, joints popping softly in protest. He turned his back on the quiet alcove, on the still forms beneath their simple coverings. He didn't look back.

The door hissed open, revealing the grotesque, pulsing organic corridor beyond. He stepped through.

He stepped out of the Pilot's quiet cabin. His boot came down on empty air. A sickening lurch twisted his gut as the deck plating simply wasn't where it should have been. Reflex took over. Mana flared, coalescing beneath his foot—a shimmering, momentary platform generated by Unfettered Stride. He caught himself, balanced precariously over a void that rippled like heat haze.

The corridor beyond wasn't stable. It bucked and warped, walls flowing like disturbed water. His Spatial Manipulation screamed warnings, a dissonant thrumming against his awareness. Space itself felt thin here, stretched taut and ready to tear. The Outsider was back, playing its games with reality.

Kitt.

Her presence surged, a counter-frequency against the wrongness. Data flooded his HUD—not schematics, but flowing lines of energy, faint cracks spider-webbing through the visible structure. It was the ship's dying senses, filtered through Kitt, mapping the bleed. Sketching out the impossible angles where dimensions intersected incorrectly.

His own Warden's Insight overlaid the energy map. Corridors twisted back on themselves, junctions opened into vistas that defied perspective. Looking directly at the shifting geometry sent shards of pain through his optic nerves. The HUD flickered, symbols spasming between standard readouts and runes he instinctively knew meant dimensional instability.

"It's not random, Blake," Kitt's thought was sharp, cutting through the visual noise. "Not like it was outside. This is structured. Deliberate. And it's an archons-bedamned mess."

He scanned the immediate area. No solid path forward. Just the shifting, treacherous landscape of a reality turned fluid.

"Options?"

"Three," Kitt replied instantly. "One: Brute force. Reinforce a path with careful pulses of spatial-affinity mana. It'd be a bit like shouting at a hurricane—it might work, but probably we just get torn apart."

He pictured unleashing some spatial-affinity variation of Kinetic Detonation repeatedly, trying to carve a stable tunnel. The energy cost alone would be crippling.

"Two: Find the eye of the storm. A point of relative stability within the flux. Safer, maybe, but feels like a lure. Could be walking into something worse."

"Not to mention getting to it in the first place." Blake was already writing the option off.

"Third option... ride the distortion waves. Use the folding itself. Our timing has to be perfect, but we could ride the front of the changes, moving through space as it firms up in resistance just before being changed. Risky as hell, but the fastest way through if we don't screw it up."

"I like the third option," Blake decided. "Guide me?"

"Of course. Just give me a minute to get a sense for how the outsider is propagating these disturbances."

"Get ready," Kitt's thought cut sharp and clear. "No hesitation. Follow exactly."

"Understood."

"Now!"

Blake launched himself forward. Not into empty space, but into the idea of a corridor Kitt projected into his mind.

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"Left bank—Hard." Blake's boots found purchase on a wall that solidified split-seconds before impact.

"Down," Kitt barked. Blake dropped, trusting the deck plating would coalesce beneath him. It did—a shimmering, transient plane of warped metal.

"Right." He ricocheted off an invisible barrier, momentum carrying him sideways.

"Forward again, quick!" A blur of twisting metal, organic pulses, and the sickening sensation of reality folding around him. He didn't see the path. He simply put his faith into the instructions Kitt dictated. There was no time for doubt—he was a projectile surfing the leading edge of a wave, and if he slowed down, everything he'd been avoiding would crash down around him.

Blake caught himself against a bulkhead as reality twisted. The chaotic rush through folding space had ended, depositing him into—

"Slow down," Kitt said. "This new section needs careful analysis."

The corridor ahead looked normal enough—straight walls, ceiling, floor. Emergency lights cast a weak amber glow across metal surfaces. Nothing overtly wrong.

"What am I missing?"

"Well, this one won't be comfortable. Gravity isn't just messed up in here—there are distinct layers of conflicting directional forces."

Blake fished out a nutrient bar from his pocket. He crumbled it, then tossed the fragments into the corridor.

The debris scattered in seven different directions simultaneously. Some pieces shot upward, others slammed left, right, backward. None settled. Each fragment caught in a perpetual dance between competing gravitational pulls, never finding rest.

"Shit."

"You'll need to maintain a spatial bubble around yourself," Kitt said. "Like when we first entered the Leviathan."

Blake studied the corridor, watching the nutrient bar pieces bounce between invisible barriers of force. "That's going to drain mana fast."

"Yes, but I see a better approach." Kitt's presence flickered with concentration. "There are null points where the gravitational fields cancel each other momentarily. Quantum instabilities at the intersection planes."

"Again, Kitt, but like I'm five."

"Points where you won't get torn apart." Golden markers appeared on his HUD, floating in the corridor like stepping stones across a pond. "Alright, we're going to target these null points, Blake. Where the fields momentarily cancel each other out. Pulse your spatial bubble at each point when you reach it. That won't fix things, but it'll create ripples we can work with."

Blake drew mana up through his core, wrapping it around his body in a thin layer of spatial reinforcement. The energy hummed against his skin.

"Go."

He stepped into the corridor. Gravity yanked at him from multiple angles, as if giants pulled his limbs in opposing directions. His muscles strained. The bubble held, barely.

"First null point, three meters ahead, two up."

Blake pushed forward, fighting the pull that wanted to slam him against the left wall. When he reached the marker, he pulsed his spatial energy.

Reality rippled. For a heartbeat, forces balanced.

"Next—right wall, five meters forward."

He leapt, landing sideways on the wall. His boots stuck as if the wall were now the floor. Another pulse.

"Ceiling, diagonal path!"

Blake sprinted across changing planes, each footfall landing on a different orientation of reality. Up became forward, left became down. His Warden's Insight merged with Unfettered Stride, showing him the path between folded spaces.

He ran across the ceiling, kicked off a bulkhead, twisted through a sudden vertical drop, and landed on what had been the right wall moments before.

"Hold position," Kitt said. "Firm up your reality bubble as much as you can."

Blake pooled mana into the spatial barrier surrounding him, thickening it like ice forming on a pond. The energy drain increased, a steady pull on his reserves.

"What are we waiting for?"

"For things to settle around us. The distortion flows in cycles. We need to let a wave pass before we exit."

Blake braced himself, legs spread in a fighter's stance despite hanging sideways from what should have been a wall. The mana shell around him brightened, edges hardening.

The wave hit like a freight train.

Reality buckled. The corridor stretched, compressed, twisted. Colors bled into one another. Up became sideways became inside-out. His shield held, but just barely. The pressure squeezed his lungs, bowed his spine. His teeth ground together as the wave peaked—

Then passed.

When Blake righted himself, he faced a set of two-way swinging doors. Plain. Utilitarian. Utterly normal. The wall beneath his feet had become a floor again, gravity reasserting its proper direction.

He dropped down, landing in a crouch. His boots touched solid deck plating with a metallic thunk.

"What's on the other side?"

Kitt paused. "Hard to tell. There's a distinct lack of the outsider's presence, though. Might be another isolated zone, like the control center."

Blake drew Verdict, checked the load. "Too convenient."

"Agreed. But we need to move forward."

Blake pressed his shoulder against one door, weapon ready. He pushed through.

A cafeteria spread before him. Long tables arranged in neat rows. Chairs tucked in place. Serving stations along the far wall. The room stretched wide, ceiling high enough for the tallest Leviathan crew members.

Clean. Pristine. Undisturbed.

And empty.

Blake swept the room, muscle memory guiding Verdict's barrel across potential threat points. Nothing moved.

"Blake," Kitt whispered. "Look at the tables."

He looked closer. Each place setting remained exactly as it had been left. Plates with half-eaten meals. Cups still filled with beverages. Utensils abandoned mid-bite.

"They left in a hurry."

"Something like that, anyway," Kitt replied.

Blake stepped deeper into the room, boots silent on the polished floor. The air held an eerie stillness, devoid of the corruption that plagued the rest of the ship.

Movement flickered at the edge of Blake's vision. A figure passed between tables—translucent, wavering like heat over asphalt.

"Did you see that?" he whispered.

"I... yes." Kitt's voice faltered. "Some kind of residual energy pattern."

Another figure materialized—a tall, willowy form in uniform, carrying a tray. The ghostly server placed meals before empty chairs. Diners appeared, frozen mid-conversation. A child laughed silently. A couple held hands across their table.

Then vanished.

"That what you call ghosts round these parts?" Blake asked, keeping his head on a swivel to avoid any incoming spooks. "Residual energy patterns?"

"What? No. These aren't spirits, Blake. Time's breaking down," Kitt said. "The past bleeding through."

The cafeteria lights dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. More figures appeared—dozens now, overlapping, walking through each other. Walking through tables. And for all he jumped out of the way, twisting to dodge, they walked through Blake.

Cold washed over him as a phantom crewman stepped through his chest.

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